Samuel Huntington’s Clash Of Civilizations Is Real

Only The Blind And The Stupid Can’t See It

By Col. Tom Snodgrass (Ret.), Right Side News

Samuel Huntington’s Thesis

In 1993 the late Harvard professor of political science, Dr. Samuel P. Huntington, published an article, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” that has provoked continuing heated controversy in both the academic world and in the halls of government. Dr. Huntington’s contentious thesis, in light of the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union, was:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.

Those two paragraphs were enough to set the hair of political science academics on fire because the professors challenged the concept that eight major civilizations based on culture would replace nation-states as the engines of international conflict. However, the most controversy was generated by the further elaboration of that cultural conflict thesis that predicted the principal strife will be between Western and Islamic cultures. It has not only ignited furor in academe, it has also reverberated through the U.S. and other governments’ foreign policy establishments because of the open-ended conflict implications of the West versus Islam.

As the ideological division of Europe has disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity and Islam, on the other, has reemerged. The most significant dividing line in Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500.

Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and north only ended at Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary success to bring Christianity and Christian rule back to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended their sway over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Ottoman power declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western control over most of North Africa and the Middle East.

However, it was Huntington’s following observations of fact that have engendered the greatest amount of angst among the dithering souls in academia and governmental bureaucracies:

In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders.

It should be noted that in 1996 Huntington expanded his initial article into a book, “The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order,” at which time he dropped the question mark in the original title. By that time, the outline of the coming clash with Islam was clear to any who had open eyes and open mind.

While Huntington’s above statements of fact are irrefutable, the clear worldwide cultural conflict implications are almost universally rejected by Western societies, from government leaders to the man-in-the-street. In fact, President George W. Bush displayed his total cluelessness about world history, Islam, and the motivation of the Islamic jihadists who attacked on 9/11 when he made the following foolish statement at the 2004 U.S. Air Force Academy graduation:

“This is not a clash of civilizations,” Bush said. “The civilization of Islam, with its humane traditions of learning and tolerance, has no place for this violent sect of killers and aspiring tyrants. This is not a clash of religions. The faith of Islam teaches moral responsibility that ennobles men and women and forbids the shedding of innocent blood. Instead, this is a clash of political visions.”

Islamic Scriptural Jihad Mandate

What makes such widespread rejection so incredible is that, in addition to the daily barbaric bloodshed perpetrated to the bloodcurdling scream of “Allahu Akbar!”, the foundational scriptures of Islam and Islamic Sharia law are replete with injunctions compelling Muslims to wage never-ending, religious-jihadist war against non-Muslims (and non-Sharia-practicing Muslims considered to be heretics), that is, Islam obligates the unceasing kinetic and stealth warfare of Islamic jihad to subdue all cultures and wayward individuals that are characterized by unbelief in Allah.

When the following Quranic suras (chapters of the Quran divided into verses) and Sharia religious-legal mandates are considered in the light of the gory slaughters Muslims routinely commit in name of Allah, it is inescapably apparent that Islamic initiated civilizational clash is the core of Islam, as Huntington correctly foretold.

Quran: [bracketed explanations inserted by author]

5:48: “And We [Allah] have revealed to you, O Mohammad, the Book in truth [Quran], confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture [the Jewish and Christian Old & New testaments] and as a criterion [domination] over it. So judge between them by what Allah has revealed and do not follow their inclinations away from what has come to you of the truth [that is, reject Jewish and Christian theologies]. To each of you We [Allah] prescribed a law [Islamic Sharia] and a method [Five Pillars of Islam].”

8:12: “When your Lord [Allah] inspired [announced] to the angels, ‘I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved in Islam, so strike them upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip’.”

8:39: “And fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no fitna [disbelief in Islam, or the disorder that results from religious discord] until the religion, all of it, is for Allah.”

9:29: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day [Islamic eschatology] and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger [Mohammad] have made unlawful [that is, do not practice Islamic Sharia jurisprudence] and who do not adopt the religion of truth [Islam] from those [Jews and Christians] who were given the Scripture [the Jewish and Christian Old & New testaments] – fight until they give the jizya [Muslim submission tax and extortion “protection money” for non-Muslims] willingly while they are humbled.”

9:73: “O Prophet, fight against the disbelievers [non-Muslims] and the hypocrites [unfaithful Muslims] and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.”

47:4: “So when you meet in battle those who disbelieve [in Islam], strike their necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either confer favor afterwards or ransom them until the war lays down its burdens. That is the command.”

61:9: “It is He [Allah] who sent His Messenger [Mohammad] with guidance and the religion of truth [Islam] to manifest it over all religion, although those who associate others with Allah dislike it [even though the infidels may dislike Muslims and resist submission].”

Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sharia Law:

“SHARIA o9.0 JIHAD [Islamic Sharia: the code of law derived from the Quran and from the teachings and example of Mohammed; the body of doctrines that regulate all aspects of the lives of those who profess Islam.]”

“O: Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word ‘mujahada’ signifying warfare to establish the religion.”

There is, however, one quotation from the Sharia that summarizes the total essence of Islam and confirms Huntington’s basic Clash of Civilizations thesis beyond any question:

“Mohammad the Prophet of Islam: I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer [that is, the ‘shahada’-the Islamic allegiance oath that proclaims the supremacy of Allah as god over Yahweh and Mohammad as prophet over Jesus and Moses], and pay zakat [which is charity only for fellow Muslims, and/or funding for jihad].

“Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program.”

Western Civilization In Decline Invites Jihad

Since conquest of other civilizations is the organizing principle of Islam from it founding, it has always had its greatest successes conquering crumbling civilizations in decline such as the Roman Byzantines, the Persian Sasanians, the Arab Christians, the North African Berbers, the East European Bulgarians, and the Germanic Franks, among many others. Consequently, the undeniable decline of Western Civilization has invited Islamic jihad. The current decayed state of Western Civilization has been accurately summarized by a very perceptive commentator on the on-going war with Islam, Lee Harris, who authored “The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West” (read this book!):

“The evidence, unfortunately, is that the West is not even remotely interested in mounting a defense of its values in the face of Muslim fanaticism. Worse, there are signs that the West is even prepared to sacrifice some of its core values in order to appease those who have always despised these values.”

Typical Criticisms Of Huntington’s Clash Of Civilizations Thesis

All of the academic literature surveyed for this article was universally critical of one or another aspect of Huntington’s Clash of Civilization thesis. An interesting fact about seven critical articles surveyed in a compendium of critical analyses entitled, “The Clash of Civilizations: Twenty Years On”, was that there were only two references to the Quran (or any other Islamic scripture), and these references misleadingly referred to suras that had been “abrogated” (According to the Quran itself — Sura 2:106, 13:39 and 16:103 — God sometimes substitutes a “better” verse or passage for one previously given, thus “superseding” or “abrogating” the first one. In truth, Mohammad was forced to tell his followers that “Allah had changed his mind” when Mohammad was caught contradicting earlier “god-revealed” holy instructions Mohammad purported were imparted to him from Allah through the angel Gabriel. Muslim apologists frequently quote the previous “replaced” sura-verses in order to validate their deceptive presentations of Islam as being a peaceful religion. The reason for the variance is that Mohammad began his evangelizing in Mecca preaching non-violence and tolerance to recruit as many as possible, but switched to preaching violence to force submission to his supposedly religious rule when he became a bandit warlord in Medina.)

Another example of baseless criticism was written by Jeffrey Haynes, again in “The Clash of Civilizations: Twenty Years On”, where he dismissed Islam as a non-threat to the U.S., just as he dismissed the Soviet Union as having been a non-threat.

It is almost irrelevant that his [Huntington’s] focal point: the impossibility of the West – read; the USA – and ‘Islam’ – read; ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ – living together in harmony was laughingly over-simplified, redolent of the paranoia of someone experiencing the shattering of a stable, safe and unchanging world suddenly and demonstrably confronted with the scenario of the post-World War II paradigm smashed to smithereens. What is a card-carrying Realist to do? Of course: find a new enemy and dress it up in the same preposterous ‘baddy’ clothes that had marked the treatment by US Realists of the USSR since the start of the Cold War and transfer the characteristics to a new ‘actor’: ‘Islamic fundamentalism.’

The point is, seven different critics of Huntington viewed the Islamic threat almost exclusively from the perspective of Western liberalism, while ignoring the foundational doctrine of Islamic imperialist jihad codified in Muslim scripture and discounting the recent decades of carnage visited on the world by Muslims carrying out that Islamic imperialist jihad doctrine. Of course, these critics are also ignoring the 1300+ years of historic, documented jihad. Clearly, Huntington’s critics are irrational.

Conclusion

The election and reelection of Barack Hussein Obama is testimony to the unquestionable deteriorated state of U.S. society. Obama has systematically undermined America’s defenses and will to resist. The handwriting is on the wall.

It is passed time that the American people approach the Islamic threat with open minds and with the determined will to confront our current unpleasant reality. If the Islamic threat and the Clash of Civilizations are not accurately defined and understood, U.S. society and Western Civilization will be lost as were so many decadent societies and civilizations that have fallen from within due to intellectual corruption and moral cowardice. In short, the U.S. needs a president that understands Islam and totally opposes its jihadist imperialism. The reason why an anti-Islam president is vitally important is that he must change Americans’ view of Islam as “just another benign religion.” Naturally to do that, he must begin with such an understanding himself.